Bloodless Coup

Here is another fun one (also courtesy of Joshua).

If you and Michael Moore are so proud of being from South Canada rather than the midwest, the South, or most of the West of this country, why not just let Canada annex your states? And, speaking as a representative of the South, take all of our felon voters you want.

South Canada? Awwww. How cute. You're emulating the president - maligning millions of Americans (or I think that's what you are doing - actually everywhere I've been in Southern Canada is quite nice, so that's not much of an insult). I for one am happy to have voted for the guy who didn't mock entire states and suggest that people who lived there were somehow less American than other Americans. Our president - always a class act. If the Kerry camp had more balls they would have instantly sent out a fax noting the number of (supposed) Americans from Massachusetts currently serving in Iraq and asking what it was about those people that Bush found less than patriotic.

couple things:

a) welcome back, stranger. i thought you'd have stopped by to gloat far sooner.

b) it was a joke. you won. lighten up, francis. for god's sake, if not for the sake of His Instrument on pennsylvania avenue.

c) but thanks just the same for confirming that this divisive rhetoric of north=canada, south=america survives even a victory evidently decisive enough to constitute a "mandate" but not so decisive as to prompt anything resembling magnanimity, even though that same rhetoric is so transparently unamerican it would be comical if it weren't so depressing.

uniters, not dividers, right? neither kerry nor his campaign ever mocked the southern republican base; indeed, as best he could, he tried to appeal to it. the same can hardly be said for bush and his boys with respect to the "northern elite." remember? the "reality-based community?" "we don't even like you?" yeah, exactly. so tell me again who are the patriots in a country of pluralism, free speech, and no government-established religion?

d) by the way, i'm particularly impressed by how well you debunked all of the straightforward factual claims that even this humorous leftward primal scream relies on and provides links in support of. like for example the fact that we traitors foot more of the bill for, among other things (along with virtually everything else), the war than southerners do (of course, if megacorporate agribusiness paid real taxes, that calculus might change, but of course it doesn't, which is just great for all of those bucolic land-husbanding americans with scythes poised ready to repulse the yankee hordes). no, seriously, y'all're the patriots. and all us yanquis belong in canada.

don't you find it suggestive that even in victory the best you can do is resurrect the corpse of michael moore and flog him some more?

maybe as the death toll mounts you can head over to this post and start thinking about how to spin/explain to the parents of the casualties of fallujah why electoral politics warranted giving the insurgents six months to dig in.

after all, when you run against truth, the campaign never ends.

Joshua,
Thankyou for your welcome back. Actually, I've stayed away for the last week because I didn't want to gloat, I know if my candidate had lost I would have felt confused and anxious.

I like your argument that (whatever you people call yourselves) foot more of the bill for Iraq than us Southern good old boys. So, are you suggesting by extension that's unfair, and that voting power should be apportioned according to how much you pay in taxes? I think it would favor you as long as you included total tax paid, because with the likes of John Edwards paying 5%, that's not likely to be more than half a vote for him if you weighed it by tax rate.
Might I disturb your diatribe to remind you that it's not the Bush voters watching Nascar on Wal mart TVs that are applying for Canadian citizenship in record numbers. When the going gets tough, the liberals go to Ontario. How patriotic is that?
I hate to burst your bubble on Fallujah, but everyone watching the news in the weeks before the election knew we were going in there this month. If you think the casualties we'll suffer would have detered Bush's supporters, you just don't understand us.
As far as your argument about running against truth, you can look forward to Kerry running in 08 as he's suggested, because hopefully by then he'll know the outcome of the war, and he can tell us whether he supported it or not.
Armand,
I agree that the Kerry campaign didn't have balls. Even Bill Maher admits that. Maybe you should make a new post: "it wasn't the values, it was the balls."

yes yes yes, john edwards' tax return provides ample refutation for the idea that the south is awfully noisy relative to its population / fiscal contribution. shall we look into cheney's tax return, or the financial misdealings that went on under his tenure at halliburton? no. why? because it's got nothing to do with this discussion.

as for record-breaking applications for canadian citizenship, i know nothing of this, and it sounds like an urban legend. aside from which, given what i assume to be minimal numbers of these applications each year, even if there were a percentage increase (and again, morris, sources) it would surely be trivial.

the liberals i know aren't going anywhere: i for one intend to fight to restore a country that doesn't impose plurality religious values on disfavored minorities, that doesn't demonize dissent, and that doesn't consider 51% a mandate. remember, bush voters are far more frequently wrong about his positions and actions on crucial issues than kerry voters, which grinds away further at the import of that 51%.

knowing that fallujah was coming, of course, also does not mitigate the cost of the political expedient of avoiding the bloodshed until november 3. when the flag-draped coffins come home, when the weeping parents are on tv, that's when the chickens come home to roost . . . oh wait, that's right, we're not allowed to see 1100 flag-draped coffins. and of course we're still waiting for the chickens.

and for the record, i'm anxious but hardly confused.

and in the interest of equal time, this little delight from a red-stater arguing for the expulsion of the "dirty dozen" states, which evidently are characterized by being on the wrong end of these pairings:

harmony, not cacophony; excellence, not dependence; justice, not histrionics; education, not brainwashing; enterprise, not welfare, and Godliness, not devilishness

my favorite part is, well, really all of it, but i especially like the attribution of "histrionics" to blue states coming from a red-stater arguing for expulsion of those pesky twelve states that don't subscribe to the author's worldview. really, a loathsome piece in sum.

for a more reasoned, though admittedly leftward discussion of this topic (not nearly as neutral, say, as the weekly standard), check out this longer rumination.

Mo - I agree with Joshua's 9:33 post. But beyond that, if you think most voters actually knew we were about to go into Fallujah you've get very little hold on the degree to which most Americans follow the news. Yes, Bush waited b/c he didn't want to risk a pre-election disaster (giving plenty of time for most of the baddies to move to other towns), but most people don't follow the news very closely - and many don't follow it at all.

Joshua,
Here's your urban legend:
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20041109/wl_canada_afp/canada_us_vote_041109155908

As an aside, the exit polls do indicate that voters who served in the military supported Bush 57 to 41, versus those who haven't supporting Kerry 50 to 49. This was a topic on another thread.
As far as your argument that "bush voters are far more frequently wrong about his positions and actions on crucial issues than kerry voters"...sources, Joshua.

As far as weeping parents on TV, if you notice, the father of Mr. "Let's roll" was campaigning for President Bush, as were many of the parents of soldiers who've died in Iraq. I would like to know why we don't see more human interest stories about the parents of Iraqi defense forces and policemen executed and ambushed by Sunni thugs trying to reinstate Saddam's regime. And what about the parents of the hundred thousand who've been found in mass graves, tortured and murdered by Saddam Hussein; oh, that's right, the media opposes Bush so we never see stories like that.

Thankyou for suggesting my bringing up John Edwards is irrelevant to this argument, and then bringing up someone who's arguing something...irrelevant to my argument. What did you say about slapping ME with my own hands?

Armand,
I'm aware you think the American people are idiots more interested in Jerry Springer than Juan Williams (though who could blame them), but if they aren't informed enough to watch the news or hear about it from other people, you're argument falls apart, because they'd never know about Fallujah whether it was today or six months ago.

Mo - What argument do you think I'm making? I don't follow that. People are likely to be more aware of it now, and they probably know some Americans have died. But few know the details of what's going on. This isn't some elitist, intellectual sneer ... it's quite well established that people don't follow the details of the vast majority of news stories (stuff like Watergate or Laci Peterson being apparent exceptions).

There were multiple articles recently noting that Bush voters had a less accurate view of his issue preferences than Kerry voters did of their candidate. I've got to run to class now - but those shouldn't be hard to find if you really want to see them.

As to the rest of your tirade - what's that all about? Some people voted for Bush, some people voted for Kerry, you expect the media to be interviewing Iraqis (most of them sensibly are keeping their heads low - in order to keep their heads) ... is there a point to all that? Ooooh - is it that all 270 million of us get to get mad that certain stories we'd like to see aren't on the news? Gosh, I better start making my list.

whether bush supporters are ill-informed or misinformed, or repressing the clear truth due to the "cognitive dissonance" of a wartime president who dissembles with his countrymen, i've got your sources riiiiiiiight here, morris. of course, since you're one of them on numerous issues we've debated ad nauseam, i don't expect you to concede the point. i'm sure the stuffed shirts over at PIPA are just shilling for the democrats anyway, seeing as how they're all booksmart elitist liberals and stuff.

as for the rest, i'm pretty sure you don't even know what you're arguing about anymore (i know that i don't), so i'm going to let it drop. if you're actually serious about your little urban legend, the article you cite elaborates on the article's truly enervating lede that traffic on canada's immigration website increased six-fold the day after bush's reelection with the following observation:

But the website visits have not yet been matched by a surge in requests for work visas in Canadian consulates, she said.

"If these people are really interested in emigrating to Canada, such requests would be submitted in the coming six months," she said.

seriously, dude: do you think i won't look? the article also fails to mention that several blogs, and at least one email circulating among despondent lefties, jokingly provided links to that very site (you would have gotten one, but you don't know the secret handshake). as anyone familiar with the blogosphere surely knows, an increase from an average of 20,000 daily visitors to 115,000 on wednesday, doesn't even equal the number of hits generated by the most modest "instalanche." which is to say, if not an urban legend outright, it's still not a real story, and it fails categorically to support your claim that americans, liberal or otherwise, are "applying for Canadian citizenship in record numbers."

one last point: your prods at my vocabulary do little but confirm the anti-intellectual streak endemic to entirely too many right wing advocates and pundits. it's amazing that this insipid bullying tactic makes it out of sixth grade into so-called "adult" political discourse (for want of a more accurate word). what are you all so damned afraid of? educated people running the country? heaven forfend! (and anyway, the longest word of the day was almost certainly your "misapprehension." (and no, going back and finding a longer word that binky or i have used will not in itself be a sufficient response to this post (and i just know that's your first instinct), although it will surely undermine my credibility forever and ever and ever and ever).

Joshua,
Well, as far as your first study goes I can't get to the page with the methodology without a password, although I'm sure a little thing like that doesn't keep you from believing in this. I'm sure it's as accurate as anything by Michael Moore, so why question it?

The website also said:
"If these people are really interested in emigrating to Canada, such requests would be submitted in the coming six months," she said.

Although I know you just want to pick and choose those quotes that support your own position. I'm sure website visits have gone up because no liberals are thinking of moving there; that makes a lot of sense. An increase of about a hundred thousands actually is significant because if you remember the article says:
"Between half a million and one million US nationals live in Canada, a number that increases by about 5,500 to 6,000 a year, Ladinardi said."

So, even one hundred thousand would increase that by twenty times.

I like the forfend joke; that's pretty funny. Thanks, I needed that. I do happen to believe that capable people ought to communicate so that the least of us can understand, rather than make people insecure through use of fancy words to keep them from asking us about our logic. It does seem I need to work on that too.

"insecure" -- your word, not mine.

as for the study, i think u. maryland's policy institute has a little more credibility than michael moore. and for the third time since i swore it was the last time, if you want to fight with moore, go to his website and lock horns with the 17-year olds and zealots. to my knowledge, nobody here has defended him. not once. and i probably never will. as i've said in so many words, i can't criticize the right's agitprop and defend the left's. it's all the enemy of reasoned political dialogue and compromise. so keep arguing with moore if you must, but don't pretend that in doing so you're either arguing with, or for that matter effectively insulting, me.

as for canada, you said there had been an increase in "applications" -- your word, not mine. you have yet to show any support for that. if you had said there had been an uptick in interest, you'd at least have shown a good level of reading comprehension, and i wouldn't still be talking about this ridiculous topic.

This just arrived in my inbox:

As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.

--H.L. Mencken (1880 - 1956)

And for the record, I think the quote speaks for America generally, not just one part of it. People in states of every hue share responsibility for where we are; that's the nature of our democracy.

and in the interest of equal time and intellectual integrity, if FTS deserved our eyeballs then so does this (more or less non-partisan) riposte to that screed.

Joshua,
Let me quote from the press release of your esteemed PIPA:
"Even after the final report of Charles Duelfer to Congress saying that Iraq did not have a significant WMD program, 72% of Bush supporters continue to believe that Iraq had actual WMD (47%) or a major program for developing them (25%)."
http://www.pipa.org/OnlineReports/Pres_Election_04/Press10/21/04.pdf

Now, I'm into my fourth stats class, and I have yet to get to the part where we learn that if 47% of a group responds a certain way and 25% of a group responds a certain way, we can just add them together and assume that none of the 47% who responded the first way were among the 25% who responded the second way, thus being able to add them together and say 72% responded in a way representative of both responses; you can't do that. Now, MAYBE the 25% agreed with the 47%, or the 47% agreed with the 25%, but since they don't show their results in a way as accessible as most legitimate pollsters, we just don't know; THAT'S why I want to see the methodology. ALSO, there's no detailed questioning about Kerry's record, so this is not really a fair approach at all, because we don't know how many of his supporters didn't realize that he voted against the first Gulf War, that he blamed France for being motivated by money when Clinton was President rather than saying we should reach out to them, that he voted against the death penalty for UBL and other terrorists. I can't help wonder if Bush supporters knew Kerry's record and Kerry's supporters didn't; if PIPA had asked these questions, we might know.

Also, it seems the Bush supporters (47%) are not exactly wrong about Saddam having WMDs:

"The Kerry campaign, the media, assorted pundits, and others are making much of the disappearance of the 380 tons of explosives from the al Qaqaa storage facility south of Baghdad. According to the IAEA, the U.N. watchdog agency now apparently in the service of the Democratic National Committee, some of the explosives could be used to detonate nuclear weapons. Wow — nuclear-weapon components were in Iraq? Shouldn't the headline be, "Saddam Had 'Em?"

"Another IAEA report came out two weeks ago that did not get as much play. According to this account, dual-use equipment that could be used to make nuclear weapons was taken from various locations inside Iraq."

"As well, if CBS wants to recycle old news in an attempt to influence the election, how about this story: 1.77 metric tons of low-enriched uranium and other nuclear material at the Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Center (Saddam's main nuclear research and development center) was secured by the United States and flown out of the country last July. According to the Energy Department this material could have been used to make a radiological dispersion device (a.k.a. a dirty bomb) or "diverted to support a nuclear weapons program."

"This charge was repeated by David Kay when he left the ISG earlier this year. The Blix Report found 1,000 tons of chemical weapons missing from Iraq, and last May this column discussed a planned al Qaeda attack in Jordan involving 20 tons of chemicals."
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/10/27/opinion/main651796.shtml

That's very equanimitous of you, Joshua, to cite a riposte to your argument. But to be honest, my daffy duck fencing memory fades after parry...

"72% of Bush supporters continue to believe that Iraq had actual WMD (47%) OR a major program for developing them (25%)." four stats classes puts you way out of my league, but it's language skills that matter here.

furthermore, if it's methodology that concerns you, you might have looked more closely. at the PIPA link i provided you, you would have found links to, among other things, this much longer report which ought to satisfy your curiosity. still, though, if you don't understand "or" in its proper use, you're probably just going to make more ungrounded objections.

you might have noted, by the way, that your long quote, ostensibly attributable to cbs, actually originates at a national review online kiosk embedded in the cbs website and was written by op-ed columnist james robbins. it would have saved saved me the trip. wingnuts have so strained the definition of "dual use", ranging from the bogus centrifuge claims to colin powell's ridiculous sketches of the sort of bio-weapon tractor trailers we're so sure we'll find that after ten years of inspections we can't find a single real photo of one, that it's near-useless terminology.

james robbins has no more credibility to me than moore does to you. frankly, my guess is moore works a lot harder.

Joshua,
You're not getting my point here. You can't assume that none of the 47% were included in the 25%, and only in making that assumption (which I think logic classes alone would qualify you to realize) could we come up with the 72% number. I can't say that 10% of Kerry supporters want to take rights away from Jews, 10% from african americans, 10% from latino americans and 10% from native americans, ergo, 40% of Kerry supporters want to take rights away from minorities, because its probably the same 10% who represent this view in its different manifestations.

If you want sources to confirm dual use materials, just ask:
"The missing explosives "can be used in a nuclear explosion device" as the blast to trigger the chain reaction, Fleming said, adding: "That's why it was under IAEA verification and monitoring" before the March 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq."
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20041025/pl_afp/iraq_iaea_us_explosives_041025222924

"The United Nations nuclear watchdog told the Security Council this week that equipment and materials that could be used to make atomic weapons had been vanishing from Iraq without either Baghdad or Washington noticing."
"Independent expert Alex Standish, editor of Jane's Intelligence Digest, said Iraqi nuclear and weapons-related material that was monitored by the U.N. before the invasion had since been found in Europe. Raw "yellowcake" uranium, apparently from Iraq, was found in Rotterdam last December, he said."
"IAEA director general Mohamed ElBaradei earlier this month told the United Nations that equipment and materials that could be used to make nuclear weapons, in some cases entire buildings housing sophisticated technology, were disappearing from Iraq."
http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=603353&src=rss/uk/worldNews§ion=news

Morris

I think you are misreading the polling by PIPA. The 72% comes from adding up the people who answered "yes" to two answers in the same question. In other words, of identified Bush supports asked if Saddam had WMD, 72% answered one or the other of two responses (that he had weapons, or had an active program). You are correct in your discussion of how to (incorrectly) add up the 10% of Kerry supporters who answer consecutive questions about taking away rights: those 10% per question are probably the same 10%. But this is not the case here. This is just collapsing the responses to two answers into a single answer, hence 72% of the Bush supporters believe either there were WMD or an ongoing program. Joshua is right on this one. If you want grounds to attack him, you could argue that the two categories shouldn't be collapsed into a single group (what, after all, is a "major progam for developing WMD", and what how did the people answering the survey understand that phrase?).

As for the "dual use" stuff, this doesn't really fly. Saddam had HMX and RDX. These explosives are necessary to make nuclear weapons, but are not really dangerous. They have legitimate civilian use (take down old buildings to put up new ones, etc.), so Saddam was allowed to have them. The IAEA was monitoring the amount of them, and making Iraq disclose where they used them (how many building they blew up) so they could ensure that they were being used for legitimate civilian uses and not siphoned off for a nuclear program. As for the yellowcake, again this is critical, but not threatening. It takes a great deal of time, effort, energy, technology and money to turn raw uranium yellowcake into the highly enrichted urianium necessary for nuclear weapons. Certainly the world (IAEA) monitors where the yellowcake is, but not as much as the specialized equipment for the enrichment process. That's the real bottleneck to making a bomb, because it is fragile, complicated and easy to track. Saddam did have bits and pieces of equipment that would have been useful in making a bomb (the HDX, RDX, some (I guess from the story you cite) yellowcake, etc.), but none of the really important stuff (centrifuges, or even an ongoing program to make them).

In other words, Saddam had some stuff that would have been useful for making a bomb (to use an absurd example, he had bricks that he could have used to make buildings in which he could have made a bomb; he had food he could have fed to scientists so they wouldn't get hungry while making a bomb; etc.), but none of the really critical materials for making a bomb, and no program for developing those materials. We were wrong. I'd really love to know why we were so wrong, and what we're doing about it. It would also be useful to discuss why so many of the people who support Bush were so dead wrong in what they believe about what we found in Iraq.

Baltar,
I get your point about the question, but that still leaves the question of why voters were only asked about Bush's record rather than about Kerry's as well. The blind partisanship suggested by the PIPA would explain voters' support of Bush corresponding to their answers and may exist in an inverted way as well in Kerry supporters being unconsciously repressing that which would threaten the political aspect of their identity and answering falsely on questions about Kerry's record, since the PIPA makes the point that answers to these questions don't vary by educational level. I don't mean to run over you with my response; that was good analysis on your part, I hadn't picked up on them both being alternative answers to the same question.

As to the suggestion that the explosives were only as useful as bricks in Saddam's nuclear program, Mr. D disagreed:
"Duelfer also said U.N. weapons inspectors recommended in 1995 that the high explosives be destroyed because of their potential use in a nuclear weapons program."
http://cbsnewyork.com/topstories/topstories_story_301083936.html

Here's more bricks:
"Although weapons inspectors said it was unclear how much equipment was purchased by the Iraqi government, they did uncover documents after the war showing that a Romanian firm, Uzinexport SA, signed a contract in October 2001 to sell magnets to Iraq that "could have been suitable" for a uranium enrichment program."
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/washpost/20041008/ts_washpost/a16142_2004oct7

With yellowcake, magnets, explosives, and let's not forget the forbidden missiles, Saddam had enough dual use material that we knew about to lay more than a foundation for his nuclear program.

As for other WMDs, there's this quote that was removed when WaPo condensed their article as I've lamented before:
"He said a threat remains that chemical weapons could be used against U.S. and coalition forces, noting information from earlier this year that Iraqi scientists had linked up with foreign terrorists in Iraq. A series of raids beginning last March, Duelfer said, prevented the problem from "becoming a major threat."
http://themoderatevoice.typepad.com/

And, let's be honest, Saddam also had a major program for developing these weapons:
"Saddam was, as the Duelfer report noted, "palpably close" to ending sanctions.
With sanctions weakening and money flowing, he rebuilt his strength. He contacted W.M.D. scientists in Russia, Belarus, Bulgaria and elsewhere to enhance his technical knowledge base. He increased the funds for his nuclear scientists. He increased his military-industrial-complex's budget 40-fold between 1996 and 2002. He increased the number of technical research projects to 3,200 from 40. As Duelfer reports, "Prohibited goods and weapons were being shipped into Iraq with virtually no problem."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/09/opinion/9brooks.html?ex=1097985600&en=c18b73fe5f6b5347&ei=5006&partner=ALTAVISTA1